April 28th

On this day, in 1897, the Chickasaw and Choctaw, two of the so-called “Five Civilized Tribes”, were forced to abolish their tribal government and communal ownership of land. This action made their land open to white settlement. This was the policy of President Grover Cleveland who, like every president before him, dreamed of eliminating Indigenous societies and “integrating” the natives into mainstream society as a lower class. In keeping with supposed Eurocentric traditions, every MALE Indian received a plot of land to own privately (… if they applied for it following US government regulations). The huge amount of remaining tribal land was opened to settlement by Anglo-Americans. Prior to this policy, the Five Civilized Tribes were doing quite well, but the ultimate effect of this (which, by the way, the History Channel refers to as a “sincere, humanitarian effort”) was to deprive Indigenous people of their land. A land in which the concepts of homelessness and individual greed were unknown until the arrival of Europeans.
This was yet another example of the misplaced notion of superiority of the dominant society who believed they had nothing to learn from the people of this land.

On another note, on this day in 1947, Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl launched a raft he named Kon-Tiki after the Inca sun god. The raft was constructed using a pre-Columbian Incan design and using materials available to the Inca to prove that the Indigenous people of Peru had the technology to travel to and settle the islands of Polynesia. The trip was successful and later DNA evidence appears to back up his theory.

“One learns more from listening than speaking. And both the wind and the people who continue to live close to nature still have much to tell us which we cannot hear within university walls.” - Thor Heyerdahl